An explanation of 'Blitzkrieg' and how it relates to tactics.

Heinz Guderian, Russia 1941

Just what are the vaunted German 'Blitzkrieg' tactics we read so much about in our history books? These tactics that took German troops from Warsaw to Paris to within grasp of Moscow, some units claiming to see the parapets of the Kremlin itself. These tactics brought Europe to its knees under a kind of ferocity and destruction not seen until then. Entire armies moved at paces that would have taken weeks to months to move during the Great War, even cavalry forces seemed slow comparatively to the movement speed of tire and track. The second largest tank army in the World, the French, were driven in the field, broken and battered along with the BEF and nearly driven into the sea which they had traveled over to fight them.

However, there is also a huge amount of misunderstanding regarding what 'Blitzkrieg tactics' are. The biggest myth is the very name of Blitzkrieg. Its origins are disputed, it might not even be a word that originated in Germany but possibly a German-savvy Englishman, but what cannot be disputed is its heavily sensationalizing by the Allies' media outlets in the early war. Talk of 'Hitler's Blitzkreig' raging across the fields of Poland, the forests of France, and the steppe of Russia were plastered all over newspapers and propaganda movies everywhere. The Germans never even used the word in any offical capacity if was theirs, maybe 1 or 2 manuals.

Blitzkrieg does not refer to any military tactic, but if anything refers to the entire national aspect of mobilization for war. The entire rapid consumption of society for the purpose of committing to a large scale war, and paced construction of war materiel to maintain the armies at the front. It also means mobilization of the army as well. Overall, its a word that doesn't mean much in the way of military tactics used on a battlefield.

A German medic attends to a wounded soldier, France 1940

So just what are the tactics the Germans employed? Surely, as we had never seen them before ever that they had to have some snappy and cool name for them right? Well, the concept of rapidly moving warfare isn't new. Its been around for as long as man has fought. In boxing you don't sit there and slug it out with your opponent, right? You move, you are constantly attempting to move strike move and strike, you never try to repeat yourself or do what your opponent is expecting. Not only that, you have to read him and make sure he doesn't manage to keep moving as well. Moving is essential to warfare, it always as been and always will be.

The idea of interarms cooperation was around before that as well, timed advances of infantry, cavalry charges and use of artillery are as old as organized warfare is as well, a simple mad mob of dudes with weapons and horses running willy nilly won't get much done besides a bunch of them dead. You require communication as well. It comes in the form of messengers, horns, whistles, bagpipes, etc were all used at one point to lead troops into battle and order them around said battlefield.

Well, what about tanks, planes and infantry? We'll accept that the forerunners of modern combined arms are steeped in the depths of military history in their ever constant battle with movement and communications. However what about the modern concept of rapid moving infantry, tanks, cavalry and artillery supported by close air support? Thats gotta be a new thing the Germans were big on, right? The designs of their tanks too, in 1940 nobody had better tanks than the Germans!

The Hundred Days Offensive in WW1, the 'nail in the coffin' if you will of the Germans, demonstrated early techniques of cooperation between tanks, infantry and cavalry, along with support from timed artillery strikes and aircraft. The Germans were on the receiving end of a series of battles that routed the German Army from the field brought an end to the First World War. Had the war drawn on another few months, we'd have seen a return to mobile warfare like that in 1914 and 1915. Without the huge defensive positions of the Germans, they'd have been forced to fight a fighting withdraw into Germany as the combined overall disposition of the Allied advantages such as tanks, aircraft, 1.9 million fresh American troops, etc began to be used in their full capacity.

The concept that the Germans invented anything new with tank warfare is a myth, and a bad one at that. Spreading that myth takes away from the men in the Inter-Bellum era who developed these new tactics they had first used in France in 1918. The Germans themselves claim to have done one thing very very well: Study. Men like Heinz Guderian learned from men like J. F. C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart. They knew their books like the back of their hand and they consumed any and all material concerning combined arms theories.

The Germans move towards wanting a motorized and mechanized army are rooted in two primary things:

1) A return to mobile warfare as seen during the pre-WW1 era. The Germans never wanted to be bogged in the trenches, hell the Entente didn't want it either but the trenches still happened. They needed to move fast and quickly. The French had shown how motorized troops can be used to rapidly bring troops into a frontline and defend an area as they had done so blunting the German push into France. To the Germans, the motorization of the infantry to defend Germany was a must.

2) Make up for their lack of field army with striking power. The Germans, with with their small army, could not hope to raise one to take the field like in the days of the Kaiser, treaty limitations and the loss of millions of young men created problems for this. In that, to defend themselves, they needed to make their limited size hurt. With rapid moving formations, they needed armored fighting vehicles to fill this need to support the motorized infantry. In tandem, combined with motorized infantry and artillery, the tanks would bring the primary striking power of these new formations.

The Germans began to work on motorization concepts in the 1920s for the purpose of their defense, however the Treaty of Versailles created hurdles that would take sometime for the Germans to get over. However, popular to common understanding, the Germans began to test tank designs as early as the late 1920s with the Versuchs Kampffahrzeug 31, known better as the Leichttraktor. The Germans and Soviets had conducted allot of cooperative tank projects in the late and early 1930s. These projects helped both sides heavily in their development and even into their war with each other. It also hinted to what was to come for the Germans as well.

In one instance in the 1930 as World War Two was around the corner, Hitler had the German Army, the Heer, show off their tanks to the Russians. The Russian delegates were unimpressed with the German tanks, at one point becoming angry and accusing the Germans that they were withholding their heavy tanks. The largest German tank at that time were the early Panzerkampfwagen IVs, with their short-75mm gun for infantry support. The Russians did not believe them, as they had their nearly 45 ton Kliment Voroshilov, or KV-1 tanks, in final development and production, the 45 ton T-35 Super Heavy Tank, the 28 ton T-28 Medium Infantry Tank, and finally the prototypes for the T-34, the A-20 and A-32 which were all starting to go over 20 tons in weight as well.

Advancing Panzerkampfwagen I Ausf. A with injured British POWs, France 1940

However, while with modern hindsight we see obviously how tanks back then were posed for their fame, in the years leading upto WW2, it wasn't an uncommon, and in some places it was popular, to note that the tank was just a niche. Its operational usefulness was exhausted in WW1. Rapid advances in anti-tank technology such as man-portable anti-tank rifles, new anti-tank guns and other weaponry brought into question the validity of the tank. The Germans had no shortage of these men and they took no break in attempting to lessen if not outright destroy the credibility of tank warfare. Even into the years before the Invasion of Poland, this was hotly debated.

These sentiments were debated about long and very hard by the German military. A German military publication, known as the National Union of German Officers offers a quote regarding a response to criticism of armored forces at this time:

'It follows that until our critics can produce some new and better method of making a successful land attack other than self-massacre, we shall continue to maintain our belief that tanks-properly employed, needless to say-are today the best means available for a land attack.'

This was published in October of 1937, showing how contested these ideas were just two years away from war.

If it was not the proponents against tanks entirely, it was the infantry-centric proponents. It was simply not those who wanted tank divisions and those who wanted no tanks at all, instead it was an ever moving battle between three sides, the two previously explained and the mindset that was popular in most of Europe in the 1930s: the concept that tanks were nothing more than infantry support tools. In France, Russia, Britain and other nations with tanks this was the popular notion. The concept of tank divisions was a new one, and prevailing thought was at that time to instead doll out tanks into smaller formations like brigades or regiments to infantry formations to support their assault. While effective, with spreading your tank forces over an area, you open yourself to getting overrun in a series of positions in which the enemy brings an amassed amount of tanks to engage you, more or less how the Germans engaged the French and British in 1940.

The Germans were not immune from this, as they developed armored assault guns for the sole purpose of supporting foot-infantry units when assaulting or defending. German assault gun crews came from the artillery branch, opposed to the tank branch which trained tank and tank destroyer crews.

It is not like the British or France did not have anyone who believed in massed tank formations the already previously stated British tank theorists like Fuller, but also the well known Frenchman Charles de Gaulle was a huge proponent of French tank divisions, however he was mostly ignored by a rather stiff and unflexible general staff, the same with the British. As World War Two became a real thing and the war began, the British and French began to understand their folly better, but by the time the French could organize proper armored divisions, the Germans had already started the war.

German troops inspect two abandoned SOMUA S35 medium cavalry tanks, France 1940

In conclusion, the Germans proved able to maybe not develop them, but instead took existing theories and concepts and produce a working model. The Germans were able to do something that others couldn't right away: adapt. The Germans certainly weren't some supermen who just pushed the French and British aside, the Invasion of France was a heavily fought German victory. The French and British put up a considerable and heroic resistance, hell personally I'd go as far to credit the French First Army into maintaining the ability for the British to stay in the war, as if the BEF had been captured in the field we could have seen the British come to the table with a peace brokerage deal.

tl;dr tanks r cool, germand did stuff w/ tanks in 1939 germany lost b/c they sucked from 1940 onward rip

This might be followed up with a post going over German tank designs from 1939 to 1945, with some insight on their impact on the war